Saturday began the "State of the League" Address and Open Forum, which started out with a smaller crowd but before long filled much of the same room that had hosted the Hall of Fame Awards Dinner the night before. Instead of a speech on the state of the United Soccer Leagues, Tim Holt reviewed a business plan on the basics of how the USL operates before opening up for questions, most of which were about details of player movements, franchise rules, and of course issues like the Nike acquisition and recent announcement of MLS about dropping their reserve teams were discussed. The open format has been a feature of the past three meetings and allows direct questions from all levels of the USL and getting some of their specific issues addressed by Tim Holt and Francisco Marcos during what is always a crowded schedule for the Annual General Meeting.

More photos from Friday's Hall of Fame Dinner Manny Lagos (who introduced Amos Magee) Darren Tilley (who introduced Pat Onstad) Tim Schweitzer (who introduced Mo Sheta) Senior Director of Youth League Development Jeff McRaney and Associate Director of SYL & Super-20 Operations Erin McGauley Chris Economides, Senior Director, USL First Division Amanda Duffy, Director of USL Second Division Operations Melanie Fitzgerald, Director of W-League Operations Lee Cohen, Director of PDL Operations From Day 2 In a session about connecting to the fan base Learning about how to connect with the local media Action from the Super Y-League North American Finals and Five-a-Side Frenzy

Two of the other meetings I attended today were about subjects that appear on the surface to be quite different, but I want to address them within a common context, and from my perspective as falling (somewhat) within the audiences that they were targeting in the meetings.

The first meeting was about sales strategies and building and retaining a loyal fan base. As a season ticket holder, it was interesting seeing the different approaches that were suggested as to how to add people to the fan base, and how to retain them. Most of the suggestions revolved around the concepts of getting to know your fan base, making their initial contact with the team a positive one, and making their ticket purchasing and game day experiences as pleasant as possible. It was also stressed that the fan base needs to be identified and separated into groups that need to be addressed differently, and that each type of fan needs a certain number of “touch points” from the team to keep them happy and coming back to the games, and of course, spending their money.

While much of this seems to fall within the basics of marketing, one thing I found interesting was that it was the first time I had heard a focus on using technology to achieve this, something that I have always felt is being under-used. By using email and mailing lists between the teams and the fans that is tailored to specific fan interests, and even using spreadsheets and databases to track the different types of fans (and not just sending mass mailings to the entire fan base), the fans can feel that they are being addressed on a more personal level. Of course the recent advances in the technology of the websites themselves is something that we have seen in recent years with the USL Live package allowing live streaming of the games, but I have always agreed that using available technology to allow fans to feel closer to the teams is something that the USL needs to embrace. The recent upgrades to USLSoccer.com and the already mentioned USLLive.com have given fans a better way to keep up to date on their teams, and has also been supplemented by fan-based sites such as this one and many others that have sprung up at all levels of the USL over the past several years.

Of course, the technology is merely the way to make that contact with a large segment of the fan base and keep them interested, but the work still needs to be done behind the scenes to be able to identify your fans, make them feel that the team is making the effort to personally keep them involved with the team, but it’s the advancement with the technology that has made that economically sustainable, something that I think many of the teams around the USL have been slow to embrace.

To put it simply, it’s nice to hear the USL stressing to it’s teams that it needs to embrace the technology of the internet as the best way to help improve their bottom line, and especially now with the economic situation, maybe their very survival.

Which brings me to another meeting I attended today which addressed very much the same issue from a different angle, this being a seminar about attracting local media coverage.

While a large part of this meeting focused on how to make contact with your local newspaper and television outlets, and how and when to provide them stories that they would find interesting enough to feature, a large part of the presentation focused on subjects that were very much the same as had been addressed in the previous meeting about increasing your fan base, but in this case the target audience wasn’t the fans, it was the media. But the process is very much the same, and it’s the technology of the team’s websites that can make the difference between whether the local media takes an interest in your team, or whether they are buried in the smaller columns in the back of the paper, if covered at all.

So the team representatives were asked questions that could have very well been asked in the fan base meeting: Is your site interactive? Do you blog? If you do, do you make sure to do so every day? Do you stream audio and video? Do you Twitter (or use other online social networking like Myspace, Facebook, or LinkedIn? Most of the teams that were present at the meeting did not, or could only answer yes to a few of the questions. The advice from the moderator of the meeting was that you have to invest in someone to build (and maintain) your team websites that could use these techniques to connect to the local media, and also make sure you have someone who can write well enough to do so on a professional level. The one point the teams probably didn’t want to hear: Yes, it costs money to do so.

I always approach these meetings as an observer and do not speak up during the sessions, but the point that this is also the way to interact with your fan base was an obvious connection that nobody brought up during the session, but which I feel made a good point to make on my daily observations about the AGM.

Of course the fact that you are reading this now, and seeing photos that are just a few hours old is testament to the fact that the technology is changing, but I still run into situations during the season where I am poking around the internet to various websites trying to get results of games that concluded hours before, so it’s obvious that not everybody has embraced the technology, but it’s nice to see the league stressing this importance to their teams as well.

As in previous years, my focus has been on the experience of the league meetings more so than actually trying to scoop any news to release, but from my angle, I thought this was the most important change this year. As usual, you’ll need to wait for the various league and team press releases to any new developments, but though the meetings I attended this year were a bit different than most previous years, I do have to say that I do come away with the impression that the league is a stable one, especially with Nike on board now, and that the various levels of the USL are all recognized for their place within the structure of American soccer, but as I’ve stated above, I also feel that the league is coming more into the 21st century as far as how to solidify their place in that structure.

And I also had the chance to talk to some of the representatives from new teams such as Austin Aztex (USL1) and Quebec Arsenal (W-League) as well as many teams that have been around for many years, and the one thing that you can’t help coming away from when you talk with the teams is that they are doing this for the passion for the game, and that’s the one level that I can definitely understand exactly what they mean.

Tomorrow will be the conclusion of the league scheduling meetings, and considering that those meetings are usually just barely controlled chaos and the schedule that comes out of the meeting is often much different when it comes out, it’s probably not a bad thing to miss. But the Super Y-League North American Finals continue for three more days so I will have some galleries posted later, as well as an update eventually to my Hall of Fame Awards Dinner report once the league has announced all of the winners.

As always, thanks to all of you who have read along and written me nice notes as I try to give some input as to what goes on here in Tampa every year.

Sunday-Tuesday: Super Y-League North American Finals continue